Storyline: Visiting another school’s campus is a cross-cultural experience. We spent last Saturday night in South Bend at a Notre Dame football game.
On Saturday Kathy Fear and I made another trip–in a long series of trips–to Notre Dame Stadium. We traveled there, as we always do, to watch our Michigan State Spartans play the Irish.
Courtesy: CBSSports.com
If there’s one thing we’ve found over the years it’s the graciousness of Irish fans. Years ago—before attending our first game there—we expected the home fans to be nasty and arrogant. But they’ve been anything but over all of these years.
Irish fans are good sports, win or lose. It happened again Saturday night. “Congratulations, Sparty!” That’s what we heard after the game.
While the Irish fans were the same as always, the stadium presentation wasn’t.
The MSU band didn’t march on the field prior to kickoff. The MSU halftime show wasn’t much better–very short with just a few songs–lasting only a few minutes.
It was the 50th anniversary of an epochal game in college football, dubbed “The Game of the Century.” the 1966 game between MSU and ND, which ended in a 10-10 tie. The ’66 ND team was fated on the field last Saturday, but no mention was made of MSU.
Courtesy: vividseats.com
We coughed up $300 (face value) for two seats located in the upper deck of the end zone. That’s an outrageous price to pay to watch one college football game–$110 more than we paid last year for two end zone seats (face value) to watch State play UM at The Big House.
The game was difficult to follow. There aren’t re-play boards at ND Stadium. And the boards they have are small in size, located in either end zone, impossible to see with the naked eye. Other scores and game stats were shown irregularly, too, without audio accompaniment.
A good audio system is a must in big stadiums, but I’m not sure I’d call what ND has “a system.” Audio levels were uneven and the PA announcer was annoying.
Courtesy: csnbbs.com
Help is on the way, though. ND is investing significantly in stadium upgrades. Donors and other benefactors will benefit significantly from the upgrades. They’ll watch games in suites and privileged plazas—on both sides of the stadium–that will be expanded significantly in number.
But one thing–a good thing–won’t change about ND Stadium. The university will continue its tradition of not commercializing the games. There won’t be company ads in the revamped stadium, a distinctly unusual policy in college athletics these days. Even NBC (the televising network) didn’t have banners that I could see.
But the most surprising thing about Saturday was the game.
I’m not sure what has happened to Notre Dame football, the juggernaut I had come to know in my youth. But it’s just not the same today as it was years ago.
I remember when Lou Holtz coached the Irish. Holtz was 100-32-2 as head man from 1987-1995. And my earliest memories of ND are lathered in images of Ara Paraseghian, perhaps the dean of all college football coaches. Ara was 95-17-4 at ND from 1964-1974.
Courtesy: YouTube
There was a mystique about Notre Dame in those days. Perhaps you couldn’t put it into words, but you knew it existed. The Notre Dame Fight Song played in your head. You saw images of Ronald Reagan playing ‘The Gipper.’ You remember watching Knute Rockne’s 1928 halftime speech.
That mystique wasn’t there Saturday night.
The team I saw seemed soft. Both lines were pushed around by a MSU team that entered the game as definitive underdog—+7.5 with a 22% chance of winning (per ESPN’s Power Index).
Who would have thought that Michigan State would (or could) run off 36 straight points at Notre Dame. The score kept growing, reaching 36-7 in the 3rd Quarter. Inconceivable had become reality.
The Irish stormed back—a positive thing on which this team can build—but it was too little too late, especially when Coach Kelly decided to punt on a 4th and 7 with over 3 minutes left and the score 36-28.
I looked around at Irish fans sitting near me as the ND punter lined up to take the snap. “We’re punting?” they asked. I said right back: “They’re punting!”
They asked a question. I stated a fact.
Courtesy: Lansing State Journal
Yes, ND punted. MSU ran out the clock.
ND’s fate was sealed after the Irish secondary blew coverage on MSU’s Donny Corley, who was standing downfield alone. Earlier in the game Corley, a true freshman, scored MSU’s first TD by outfighting an Irish defender for the ball in the end zone.
Didn’t that use to be ND’s calling card?
We left the game—congratulated by ND fans, just like always—and made our way through the lots to where we had parked our car. But something was different about the walk this time.
We were amazed to see rubbish, mostly alcohol containers—beer and discarded bottles—everywhere. A middle-age women was passed out in her SUV, leaning against the steering wheel, all doors wide open, with bottles piled high all over the vehicle. Similar stuff was strewn about, piled high outside her car. It looked like a scene right out of Hollywood, but it was almost too contrived to be real. We looked around and found the same scene–a lot of empty bottles and a lot of trash–everywhere in sight.
We know this kind of behavior takes place all around the country every football Saturday. But what struck us is that it was happening adjacent to the stadium–and Notre Dame Stadium, at that.
John Hannah (left) and Fr. Ted Hesburgh (michiganstate.247sports.com)
We don’t remember seeing that kind of behavior before, but we hadn’t been to a ND-MSU game in South Bend for a few years. Michigan State no longer plays at Notre Dame every other year. About six decades ago ND’s Father Ted Hesburgh and MSU’s John Hannah worked out an annual home-and-home playing arrangement. They’re gone now and so is the regular series.
I used to look forward to making that every-other-year trip–to the Mecca of College Football. The visits began my second year in East Lansing. The year was 1979 and MSU lost, 27-3. It wasn’t much of a game; the Irish manhandled the Spartans that day.
“The mystique,” I thought.
Times change, don’t they?
Regarding the lost ND mystique, one could say the same about programs including USC, UCLA, Texas, Penn State, and others. The money associated with television has incentivized many more large schools to invest heavily in their football programs, resulting in far stiffer competition. Mystiques still exist with some schools (OSU and Alabama, for example) but they are becoming more costly and difficult to sustain.